Image specialists give themselves an online makeover

STYLE experts at NKD Clothing have applied their impressive design credentials to give their own business a makeover.

With Government backing the fast-growing corporate clothing company has undergone a dramatic online revamp.

Now it has unveiled a bold new logo along with its improved website, with plans to use its beefed up presence to promote further growth, including international opportunities.

Gill Eastgate, director at NKD Clothing, said: “We’re delighted with the new look because it perfectly captures our ethos of using the best materials and classic styling.

“We are constantly striving to show to people that, when it comes to work wear and staff uniforms, practical does not have to equal unattractive.

“We’ve proved time after time that functional work clothes can look amazing. Likewise we’ve now got a practical and effective website that also looks very attractive.”

It took three months to complete the new site, www.nkdclothing.co.uk from inception to launch and was partly funded through Scottish Enterprise, which has identified NKD Clothing as a potential high-growth firm.

Already well-established as Scotland’s leading designer and supplier of corporate wear and uniforms, NKD Clothing is particularly strong in the hospitality and hotel sector, with Malmaison, Dakota and De Vere hotel groups among its clients.

Increasingly it is attracting interest from a wide range of sectors, interested in the business benefits of well-turned out staff, including florists, GP practices and numerous retailers.

Gill, whose nine-strong team based in Edinburgh have built a £1.3m-a-year business since she led a management buyout in 2005, said: “We’re not trying to compete with the budget clothing suppliers.

“There is always a place for superior quality and increasingly we are finding there is no reason for geographical boundaries to restrict that. We have had a number of tentative approaches from abroad and we are keen to pursue further possibilities.

“Global business is web business. We’ve taken an important step towards making sure we have a web presence which is up to that challenge and can be further expanded.”

NKD’s new site has also makes the most of the impressive work of Scots photographer, Anna Isola Crolla. Her professional images properly capture the quality of design and fabrics in NKD garments, featuring modeling talent from Glasgow’s Superior Model Management.

Neil Wurmel, Creative Director with Edinburgh’s Heehaw Multimedia, oversaw the web redesign and added: “We’re really proud of this site. We’ve kept it simple and the real challenge for us was to match our design to what NKD produce.

“If you look at their clothing they really are very stylish and contemporary and the quality shines through. We took our inspiration from that and we’ve come up with something that complements it very well.”

To launch the new site, NKD has contacted hundreds of clients and business contacts offering them the chance to win a luxury hotel stay. Web visitors are invited to enter by answering a question which involves reading through the site.

Gill added: “What I’m particularly pleased about is that it’s not just the ideal platform for our work – it is also a showcase for the other businesses we work with, including a Scottish web developer, photographer and modeling agency.”